Friday, September 30, 2011

So BusinessWeek profiled the DR and spent 20 minutes on the phone with me for the article. Nothing I said made it in, but it was a fluff piece about DR's new lipstick-on-a-pig campaign, so as expected.

Also? Just because this blog is now #6 in search terms versus #1 doesn't mean people like your pharmacy. It means we've focused on other projects that aren't as depressing and haven't created new articles. Pretty much SEO 101.

Pretty sad when you use the measure of THIS spiteful blog as your benchmark for success.

"The layouts were labyrinthine and the merchandise disorganized. The staff was so famously sullen that the blog “I Hate Duane Reade: Service from Hell” used to come up first when Googling the company. In 2007, New York magazine asked the actress Martha Plimpton, a lifelong resident of the city, what she hated most about living there. “The dead-eyed pharmacy people at Duane Reade,” she said. “It’s always a journey into the heart of darkness.”

And:

"Duane Reade still has some transforming to do. This year it again ranked last among pharmacies in customer service, as measured by J.D. Power. Its score did improve, though, something that’s never happened in the five years the survey has been taken. Duane Reade executives prefer another ranking, which measures how likely it is that a customer will refer someone to the chain; on that score, Duane Reade says it has improved 150 percent since 2008.

Then there’s the informal score: The I Hate Duane Reade blog went quiet after Walgreens bought the chain. These days, if you Google Duane Reade, the blog comes up sixth."

134 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I hate this store. The people are so rude, especially the store in Rockaway Park, NY. I would drive an extra 10 miles just to go to CVS or Rite Aid. Lord how I want to go back to Georgia where the people are so much nicer and always helpful.

Fantastic blog! I dont think Ive seen all the angles of this subject the way youve pointed them out. Youre a true star, a rock star man. Youve got so much to say and know so much about the subject that I think you should just teach a class about it...HaHa!

Duane Reade has really earned the nickname "Duane Ripoff". They keep jacking up the prices of simple common items to the point of totally ridiculous. For example, Fancy Feast cat food ranges from .60 to .89 everywhere else, at Duane Reade its jacked up to $1.19 a can. They just in the last month or so jacked up Red Bull from the 2-for-$4 price to $2.50/can. 90% of the local stores charge $2/can and only one charges $2.25.It used to be I would only buy limited normal price items, but the blatant unreasonable price jacking has gotten so bad I refuse to buy anything at all.

Also, there are frequently panhandlers lurking right outside the grove st jersey city store, which is creepy.

At the jersey city grove store, first they had a change sorting machine which was finally removed as it was always out of service, then thatbwas replaced with a photo printing booth which has been out of service for several weeks.

I plan my shopping and go shopping further away just to avoid Duane Reade. I am hoping the jersey city location goes out of business and gets taken over by cvs or rite aid.

Oh yeah, and also the customer rewards card. It used to be you get a $5 store credit for every $100 you spend, which somewhat made up for the Duane Ripoff prices. Then they made a big stink about a new "improved" rewards card, having everyone destroy the old cards.

Well the "improvement" was to change it so you have to get 500 points instead of the previous 100 points (a very simple 1 point for 1 dollar program) in order to get the $5 store credit reward. They further complicated this adding a confusing point structure so you have no idea how much you have to spend to get the $5 back.

Mostly its still one point for one dollar, but sometimes they randomly add double or triple for no publicized reason, except to be confusing.

The result is that where you used to spend $100 and got $5 back, now you will spend on average $300-400 dollars before getting the $5 back.

And, its not a reward at all in the end, since a lot of their prices are jacked up 30%or even more than other stores charge, even with the cruddy dollar or two you get back for every $100 you spend, youre shelling out and extra 30% on that hundred to begin with. It works out better to go further away to shop.

Hi there, awesome blog...wish you would write more since you're an ontario pharmacist...i've started my own blog to talk about the issues i'm having with community pharmacy in ontario at the moment...if you would add me to the blogs you follow i could get some exposure. online pharmacy with no prescription

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